Giving Notice
by purebristles
Summary: [RLNT] An Auror's eye. A werewolf's nose. A sense of inevitability. [Updated with chapter 6!]
1. Meetings and Impressions

**Disclaimer: **These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.**  
Rating: PG-13/T  
Spoilers/Timeline: **Written after _HPB_. Starts immediately after _GoF_.  
**A/N: **Do read and review. This is another one of my writing exercises, just to get myself in shape for a longer story with some semblance of an original plot. I'm just exploring Nyphadora's psyche; excuse me while I frolic in her pink world a while.

**Chapter 1: Meetings and Impressions**

Amid introductions, she mentally profiles him. Casting aside the vague memories she has of him from her childhood, she takes in the carefully worn clothes, the patched elbows on the tweed coat, the careful, minute darning that adorns his pocket seams. _Poor, but of a decent sort. Friends with Sirius. _She makes a mental note to quiz her long-lost cousin on him later.

The meeting starts. Her mind fills with the convoluted chess game that the Order is playing with Voldemort, and her eyes cloud over with thoughts of the new dark rising.

She thinks nothing more of him.

-----

She drenches him the next time they meet. Her tardiness to the meeting not aided by the pouring London rain, she arrives, soaked to the skin, and just – only just – manages to _not_ knock over the umbrella stand. She congratulates herself even as she trips over her own feet entering the kitchen. Desperately turning on her heel, she manages to fall into him, her mackintosh sloughing off litres onto those carefully worn clothes.

He ignores her whispered, flustered apologies as he helps her to her feet. "Are you alright, Miss Tonks?" he asks in a low voice, his eyes checking her over for injury. "Yes," she says, flopping into the empty, hard-backed wooden chair beside him. He gestures with his wand. "A drying charm, with your permission?" She nods assent, and notes, even as the meeting continues, that he has managed a subtle warming charm along with the drying. It is a trick she has heard about, but never bothered to learn.

As she listens to Charlie's reports from Romania, she wonders when the last time someone addressed her so gracefully. Charlie concludes his discussion on tracing contraband dragon heartstring through smuggling syndicates, and Moody steps up and starts outlining emergency evacuation plans for the wizarding community.

She wraps her Auror's mind around the flight of thousands of wizards without ministry support, and the incident slips from her mind.

-----

She was worried. The Order was taking up more of her time than she imagined, but she would not give up a single minute of it. This first week she was inducted, they had meetings every other day, but tiring as it may have been, she would not have missed a single one of them for anything. No, not even a Weird Sisters concert.

For not a single one was superfluous. Not in the least.

Prior to her recruitment by Moody, an inkling of the deeper sickness that ailed the society she had vowed upon Merlin's name to protect had already pervaded her sixth sense. _Something is rotten in the state of England, _she had thought to herself when the Aurors were called in to investigate the Tri-Wizard death. The vague whisperings of Voldemort's return left her cold, but all suggestions to investigate the matter further were turned down "by order of the Minister of Magic himself."

She realised now, that rot had taken hold from within as well.

"Fudge is now refusing to grant me an audience," Dumbledore had said grimly. "He is also slowly consolidating his political base by creating new posts and promoting wizards whose political views parallel his own." Working two steps ahead, she caught Shacklebolt's eye. He gave her a small nod. _Our jobs just became more important and more dangerous. Guess we have to tread even more carefully now._ Dumbledore's countenance in the meetings always contrasted starkly with the mental image she had of him from her time in Hogwarts.

The disparity frightens her more than she would like to admit.

-----

At the fifth meeting, she realises that an informal seating pattern has developed among the Order members during meetings. An exceptional five minutes early for the meeting, she idly sketches pseudo-psychological theories as to why Snape sits beside McGonagall, why Sirius never sits down, why Arthur always switches his chair to a hard-backed one. Why the Aurors play musical chairs with the section of the kitchen they have claimed their own. Why she always found the only available seat next to Lupin when she arrived, always invariably late.

Her speculations end when Dumbledore walks in. Her eyes widen when she realises the Department of Mysteries that Dumbledore is speaking of guarding is _her_ Department of Mysteries, in _her_ London, and all that is happening is happening on _her_ watch.

As she turns her attention toward her old headmaster who is outlining plans to stand guard, she absently takes note that Lupin never turns up for this particular meeting.

-----

_# mackintosh – not the computer, but a raincoat in Britain._


	2. Never Again Gullible

**Summary: **An Auror's eye. A werewolf's nose. A sense of inevitability.  
**Disclaimer:** These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.  
Rating: PG-13/T  
**Spoilers/Timeline: **Written after HPB. Starts immediately after GoF.  
**A/N: **This is Lupin's POV. I'd like to imagine that they didn't immediately feel the connection between them, as so many other writers have imagined. 

**Chapter 2: Never Again Gullible**

He thinks that Moody has lost his final marble when he recommends Nymphadora Tonks for the Order. _Is our cause that desperate? Isn't she a little young?_ he questions Moody, who gave him a look, a sniff, and then proceeds to ignore him. That seemed to settle matters, and Remus wasn't one to push the envelope with Moody. He vaguely remembered a trip to Diagon Alley with James and Sirius sometime in third year, a chance meeting with an aunt or someone, and a toddler with an unforgettable name adorned in pink.

He wonders if they were making mistakes already, and imagines an army of pink-swathed toddlers wielding wands against Voldemort. Twisting his mouth into a wry smile, he re-focuses on Moody, who seems intent on recruiting all "his" Aurors whom he personally trained. Remus would have imagined Moody thinks the Aurors his own personal army, except that Moody is not prone to flights of fancy. Far from it, as a matter of fact.

He somehow manages not to notice the slight softening of Moody's tone whenever he mentions Nymphadora.

-----

He is speaking with Sirius when they first meet. At first, he cannot reconcile the young lady slowly squeezing Sirius to death with her embrace, with the short bundle of energy in Sirius's arms from his memories.

"Remus!" Sirius is positively _beaming_ when he turns around, holding her by the hand. "Remus, you'll never guess who this is!" She is still looking at Sirius adoringly, a huge grin on her face.

"No, I'm sure I can't," he says drily.

"She's my cousin, you know, from Andy? She married Ted Tonks and got blasted off the family tree too? Nymphadora Tonks – "

"Just Tonks, thanks – "

" – this is one of my best mates, Professor Remus Lupin!"

He notices that she barely manages to tear her gleaming eyes away from Sirius to give him a cursory once-over. He holds out a hand, and she grasps it with a firm grip.

"It's a pleasure, Miss Tonks."

She makes a face. "It's just 'Tonks', thanks. Sirius _knows_ I hate my name."

He inclines his head as Sirius drags her away to huddle in a corner, chatting away excitedly. Was it just his imagination, or did her nose just give a funny twitch when she spoke? He takes in her pink hair and her bright laughter, and wonders again, if their cause is so desperate that they've sunk to recruiting random Goth punks off the streets of London.

Then Dumbledore arrives, and he realises belatedly, that this is the first full meeting of the Order of the Pheonix. Reborn, just as Voldemort himself was reborn.

He takes a seat in the kitchen, missing James and Lily so much it hurts to breathe, and his eyes start to tear. _Prongs, Prongs. We will not fail you again._

He clenches his fists tight and thinks of Harry.

When Dumbledore approaches him at the end of the meeting, with a steely look in his eye and a mission on the tip of his tongue, his heart sinks and his stomach roils. _Live among werewolves and locate my maker? Please, Dumbledore, anything but this. This is the life which you helped me escape from. This is the life nobody wants for me. This is the life which is death for all._

He looks past Dumbledore and sees Sirius laughing with his cousin. In his mind's eye, he sees James, laughing with Lily. He raises his eyes to Dumbledore's.

"I understand. It must be done."

Dumbledore nods and leaves, leaving Remus nauseous._ James. I will not fail you again._

He takes a deep breath, clenches his fists tight, and thinks of Harry.

-----

He speaks to Moody about her after the second meeting.

"Are you sure you want to keep her in the Order?"

Moody regards him, his magical eye spinning a lazy figure-eight in its socket. "M'lad, she's an Auror I trained myself." And he stomped away, peg-leg clomping in a steady rhythm.

_An Auror? She tripped on her own feet! She didn't think to do a drying spell! She was staring, lovestruck, at Charlie Weasley when he was giving his report! Auror? _

He rubs his eyes and sighs. This is not a problem he should be dealing with. But after Peter's betrayal, he is wary of particularly inept people. For he knows now, that awkwardness can hide treachery. Gawkiness can conceal years of bitterness. Discomfort could mean lies.

He knows all this, all too well. The price he paid – the price they all paid – for that lapse in judgement was too high. Turning to look at her retreating back, he narrowed his eyes and hardened his heart. No, he would not be making that same mistake again.

He would have back that pound of flesh.

-----

_A/N: Yes, I rather like Shakespeare. Thank you for your kind comments so far. _


	3. Getting It Together

**Disclaimer:** These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.  
**Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Spoilers/Timeline: **Written after HPB. Starts immediately after GoF.  
**A/N: **To everyone who's reviewed: thank thee kindly. I'm writing Tonks this way because I'd like to think that her intelligence manifests itself in other parts of her life as well, and not just in the clumsy-romantic sphere. Plus, she's an Auror – I don't think they take in just any old clumsy idiot.

**Chapter 3: Getting It Together**

"… but my preliminary observations before I dive in seem to suggest that their society is anarchistic in nature – "

"Listen, _Professor Lupin_, in English, _s'il te plait_. Not all of us use words above three syllables."

"Sirius…"

"I am."

"I think you deserved those twelve years in Azkaban for keeping that stale joke alive."

"You're just jealous 'cause your name's _boring_ while mine's funny and punny."

"Well, _punny_'s two letters away from _punch_, so…"

… and Lupin's voice dips too low for her to hear. She eats quietly at the kitchen table after the meeting, purportedly looking over the notes she took, but in actual fact surreptitiously eavesdropping enjoyably on everyone around her. Arthur and Bill were discussing how to open inter-species talks with the Gringotts goblins, Kingsley and Mad-Eye were throwing about ideas on how to add more protective wards to 12 Grimmauld Place, while Molly and Emmeline were talking about the latest robe fashions in a hush-hush tone. She found it ironic that the most subdued discussion was the only one that was legal.

The ability to overhear conversations without being too conspicuous was never an official section of Auror training, but it was one which trainees had to develop if they were to survive the rigorous practical examinations set by the Ministry. Her eyes crinkle as she recalls the huge ballroom they had their evaluations in. The point was to work with your partner as a couple, mingle, and somehow find out who had perpetuated an upper-class murder through pure interaction. _Ooh, sort of like Cluedo!_ her father had exclaimed when she told him about it. She snorts and chokes a little as she remembers her mother's confusion, and her father's enthusiastic explanation.

"Are you alright?" Brown eyes swing in her direction.

"Yes, I just choked on my food. Have you ever known anyone who was so clumsy she couldn't even swallow properly? Don't answer that. Could you pass the gillywater please?"

_Play on your strengths – but don't forget your flaws as well. _Moody's lessons in developing personal strategy waft to the forefront of her mind as she speaks. _The key to being a good Auror is knowing to use both your strengths AND your weaknesses to your advantage._

She feels bad about misleading the members of the Order, but she sees no real way out of it, not at this early stage where she still does not know whom to trust. She thinks that it is better that everyone sees her as a clumsy idiot and underestimate her for now. _Besides, Moody and Dumbledore know me. If there is a spy among the Order as before, better that word gets to Voldemort that the Order are recruiting pink-haired punks, rather than war veterans._ At this early stage where each side is waiting for the other to claim first offence, it is always better to be underestimated side.

The last incarnation of the Order was felled by too much trust in its members. Too much trust in friendships. And yet, she knows that the lack of trust breeds miscommunication, which is the root of all organisational evil. She knows that she is walking the tightrope between prudence and paranoia.

She has no great desire to fall off.

Lupin surprises her by refilling her glass instead of handing her the bottle. "Thanks. I probably would have spilt it." She takes a sip.

"You know, you really shouldn't be working and eating at the same time." Her eyebrows lift slightly at his attempt at starting a conversation. _This does not fit the profile I have of you, Professor Lupin. You should be quiet, shy, prone to bouts of depression, slow to speak, slow to anger, preferring to bottle emotions up to release later._

"And why is that, Professor?" She attempts to style her left eyebrow in the shape of a question mark, but has no idea of her success without the benefit of a mirror.

True to type, his gaze travels upwards and fixates on the eyebrow. She arches the other one, and he shifts his attention back to her eyes.

"I can't recall the answer to my question, Miss Tonks, because I was extremely distracted by what just occurred to your left eyebrow. I vaguely remember something about words not going well with digestion." He frowns, as if trying to remember something.

She grins. _Wry humour. Guess he really is a Professor at heart. _She blinks very hard, once, to reset her eyebrows. She takes another sip of her gillywater, and wonders if he'll be one of those who guesses correctly what she is. Very few people are acquainted with the term _metamorphmagus_, and even fewer are actually acquainted with one. The few who know offhand are almost invariably purebloods.

"Just call me 'Tonks', please. 'Miss Tonks' sounds so old."

He gives a small start, snaps his fingers, and sits up straighter. "Metamorph. Metamorph-gus. No, that's wrong, somehow…" He slumps back in his chair, and she takes pity on him and puts him out of his misery.

"Metamorphmagus."

He exhales, his mouth forming a silent 'O' of understanding. "I was trying to derive the ending of the word from 'animagus'. I should have known that 'magus' was the common link. 'Animal-gus', what was I thinking?"

"Sirius didn't tell you?"

"I didn't tell him what?" Sirius suddenly pops his head into their conversation.

"That your cousin is a metamorphmagus."

"Oh. Well, she is."

"Thank you for that timely piece of information."

"You're welcome."

"Dog."

"Hey! I take that very personally, canine."

Sirius grins at Lupin, and she realises that the bond between the both of them goes beyond that between good friends – there's something there that she can't put her finger on. She's tempted to chalk it up to the mysterious bond that exists only between boys, but they seem to be even closer than that. She regards them critically, and wonders if there is a history, but their interaction does not give her _that_ sense, and they do not look nor act like it. And Sirius's eyes have followed the ladies in the Order when they move, not the men.

Lupin's eyes never rove that way. He just sits and observes while she squirms beside him, always restless during meetings. It's the reason why her notes are always full of doodles. Suddenly tired of her own mind games, she asks abruptly, "How long have you known each other?"

They look surprised at her question. "I dunno, seems like forever. When was it? 1971?"

Lupin looks exasperated at Sirius. "I cannot believe that you cannot remember when you went to Hogwarts."

"Twelve years of Dementors can make you forget a lot of things." Sirius says this lightly, but she notices that he stares at the table instead of meeting Lupin's eyes. Lupin seems to notice it too, and he answers her.

"Twenty-four years, I suppose, since it's 1995, but like he said, twelve years of Dementors."

"Did you ever… get together?" She makes a vague gesture with her hands. Lupin's brow furrows.

"Get together? We went to school together, if that's what you mean."

"No, I mean… _get together_ get together."

"But I already… oh." Lupin's eyes widen, and Sirius's jaw drops.

"Tonks, I'm going to kill you." Sirius is staring at her incredulously, while Lupin starts to laugh.

And laugh.

And laugh.

He pushes his chair backwards to give himself space to bend over, his hands holding his sides. By this time, all Order members who had stayed for dinner were staring at Lupin laughing, and she feels her neck getting warm.

"Tonks? What did you do?" Molly leans over and asks her, even as she stares at Lupin with a sort of morbid fascination.

"She asked a stupid question, and she's getting a stupid answer." Sirius's eyes were still boring at hole into her.

"Not… a… stupid… question…" Lupin was recovering from his sudden bout of mirth, and took out a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away stray tears. "There are no stupid questions, Tonks. Only very surprising ones." He stowed the handkerchief and raised his hand to everyone in the kitchen, which has suddenly become very quiet. "Sorry everyone, Tonks just told us a very good joke."

"Really? Come on Tonks, share!" Bill looks at her and smiles.

"Oh, er, it's not really that funny…"

"My dear, anything that can get Remus _that_ engaged has got to be good. I don't think I've ever seen him laugh so much before; I nearly stopped breathing when he started," Arthur tells her.

"Yes, Tonks, why don't you _tell us_ your _amazingly funny joke?_" Sirius's voice has an edge of challenge in it, which she decides to ignore completely, leaving her in the completely unenviable position of wracking her brains for a joke.

"Er – how many Veela does it take to light a wand?" _Smooth, Nymphadora, smooth._

There is silence in the kitchen. Bill breaks it by picking up his fork. "Tonks, I'm picking up my fork right now, because I suspect the answer will make me want to stab my eyes out."

"Just one, but about a hundred wizards will offer to do it for her!" She fakes a bright smile around the kitchen. Nobody is laughing, Sirius's gaze has turned incredulous, but Lupin's smile seems to become bigger and bigger, until it seems he is truly holding in another bout of hysterics. _At least I was right about him keeping his emotions in tight reign._

She shrugs.

"I told you it wasn't funny."

The silence, again, is deafening. Bill, bless his heart, breaks it again by addressing Lupin.

"Remus, mate, you seriously need to develop a new brand of humour."

Lupin's smile grows even brighter, and he can't seem to stop himself from pointing to Sirius. "I've got all the Sirius I need right here." And he breaks out into peals of laughter again.

Bill just looks perplexed. "Mate, you've gone mental." He shakes his head and turns back to his dad. "Anyway Dad, I'm on shaky ground because I'm still relatively new at the London branch, give me a couple of…"

Bill's pronouncement seemed to conclude the interest in their conversation, and she finds it slightly easier to breathe. She looks down at her plate, fully aware that Sirius was still looking at her. She risks a glance at him.

"Sorry 'bout that."

"Oh, don't be sorry, I don't think I've laughed so much in twelve years," Remus said. Sirius's mouth gives a little twist, and he smiles sardonically at her.

"Well, now I know that I'm really missed by my _friend_," he stresses.

"Alright, alright, I was only asking…" She cannot believe that she started the debacle, and frantically looks for a reason to excuse herself, without looking like she's frantically looking for a reason to excuse herself. Thankfully, Kingsley saves her the trouble.

"Ready to go?"

"Yes!"

As she fair leaps away from the table, she manages to simultaneously drop a fork, spill her glass of gillywater, and topple the chair.

-----

_A/N: Writing everything in present tense is nearly killing me, unless my grammar teacher gets to me first._


	4. Remus Man Werewolf

**Disclaimer:** These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.  
**Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Spoilers/Timeline: **Written after HPB was released. Starts immediately after GoF.  
**A/N: **Sorry for the slow updates – but you know how life is. Do read and review.

**Chapter 4: Remus. Man. Werewolf.**

He's not too proud to admit he was wrong about her. _A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday._ He smiled to himself. _Smartass. I never enjoyed Alexander Pope._

He and Sirius have never been anything more than good friends. In fact, if anyone should have been accused of being… anything more than just friends, it should have been Sirius and James. He smiled at the memories. _Thick as thieves, both of them._ He wasn't too proud to admit to himself that he had felt jealous of their connection at times, when they excluded both him and Peter from their talks. But he never begrudged them their connection – it just simply _was_. There was no hows or whys about it. Sirius and James had always been… Sirius and James. James and Sirius. And they had never been obnoxious about it; their camaraderie was just simply… there. Inexplicable and unexplainable.

He turns over in his bed, the springs creaking loudly.

It wasn't so much that he was hoping to become half of 'Sirius and Remus'. He yearns for the human connection to that other person, but he had never actively sought it out. The marauders' friendship was not so much an evolution, but rather forceful thrusts, yanks, and old-fashioned pummelling of his active participation through the sheer force of James and Sirius's combined wills. And he knew that the kind of connection that had existed between James and Sirius could never be replicated – it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. _You only get one best mate._

He realises that he will never get to sleep this way. _Downstairs then. Maybe milk._ Molly would have left some in the kitchen, knowing that he was staying over. _Maybe even some of her amazing chocolate chip cookies. Or muffins. Or brownies._ He scrabbled around his mind, trying to think of other goodies that Molly might have left behind. _Nuts, perhaps? Or maybe even a Shepherd's Pie. Or Lorraine Quiche. _He knew what was keeping him up. He tried not to think about it. _Cereal. Blueberry pie._ Desperately cataloguing Molly's culinary repertoire. _Anything else, please, feed me so that I don't have to think._

He fails.

_I don't want to go. I really don't want to go. Why me?_ And stops himself from questioning further. There could be no 'why's in his life. The 'why's would drive him insane, had driven his early self half-mad with the circular logic of it. There was no why about it – asking why he had to go to the colony would only result in questioning why couldn't anyone else do it. Which would lead to why was he the only werewolf in the Order. And would lead to the ultimate unanswerable question which plagued his whole life: _Why am I a werewolf? Because I wanted to stay out five minutes more? Because my parents didn't look out for me? Because Greyback is a sadistic bastard?_

There was no why.

There was only him.

Remus.

Man.

Werewolf.

He sighs, and shakes out a couple of cookies from the jar that Molly had left. Pours himself a glass of milk, and sits at the sink, looking out from the kitchen window into the back yard. It was beautiful in the night, with the moonlight softening the harsh edges of whatever it overlooked. He looks up at the silver disc. _There you are, my lady. Beautiful and soft, and yet waxing to my eternal doom._

He feels the quiet desperation creep upon him again. At first, he fights that feeling of helplessness and uselessness. He was better than that. He was helping the fight. He wasn't useless. He was taking a disadvantage and turning it around on the war-mongers.

_Play to your strengths, but never forget your weaknesses either,_ he hears Moody in his head. But tonight, this night, at this very place – the stars and the moon are aligned against him tonight. No, his resolve is water, is mulch tonight – tonight is about wallowing. Is about the fear. Tonight is about giving in to the nausea that he feels swirling around his belly, like a slippery swamp snake, sliding restlessly – left, right, circle, in, out.

_I am going to go mad._

He swallows the last bits of the cookies and gulps down the milk, leaving the dishes and glass in the sink for Kreacher to do. A sudden wave of nausea hits him, and he retches into the sink, effectively throwing up the cookies, milk, and part of his dinner as well. He spits, and rinses out his mouth with water.

_Strange how a quick vomit can make you take a load off,_ he muses as he casts a few quick _scourgify_s on the dishes. _Sirius will be mad that I didn't leave them for Kreacher,_ he mulls hazily. He picks up the cutlery and starts to place them back on the shelf when he hears a soft scuffle of feet.

Startled, he dropped his glass and plate and whirled around, one hand stretched out to – _to what, Lupin? Brace your fall? Cast a silent spell without your wand?_ In the milliseconds between, he cursed himself for his inattentiveness.

"Moony?" _Ouch. Damn you, mongrel. _From his vantage point on the floor, he looks up into Sirius' sleep-addled eyes. "Moony, what on earth are you doing?"

"Taking a nap on the kitchen floor, what else?"

"Not particularly sanitary."

"Molly keeps a clean house."

"With mops and brooms and pails that Kreacher lovingly defecates over."

"Now that's a horrid image to have." He takes his wand and turns the _scourgify_ on himself this time, feeling the hairs on his forearms rise. He wonders, not for the first time, if there is a correlation between the physics of muggle studies, and the casting of spells. For if there was a relation, he would hazard a guess that _scourgify_ definitely caused a moderate case of static electricity.

"Can't sleep?" Sirius walks and pours himself some milk. They sit at the kitchen table, facing the sink rather than each other, looking out through that small window which looks over the back yard, which is looked over by the moon, the beautiful moon, the smiling, inconstant moon, which Juliet refused to let Romeo swear by.

"Thinking."

"Oh. 'Bout?"

"Mission."

Sirius' brows furrow at that. "A mission? Sounds serious." His eyes dance a little at the joke, then sobers again. "Better than sitting down on my fat arse getting fatter everyday, feeding a grumpy, under-exercised hippogriff."

"It's to werewolf country." He turns to look at Sirius balefully. "Wanna trade?"

He cannot meet Sirius' stricken look, and turns away.

"When?" He almost misses the low question.

"Don't know, couple of weeks perhaps? I've got to get a little grungy and grumpy before I meet up with the first enclave, and you know me, I can't act at all, so I'd best go rough it out a week before on my own and get really ticked off at human civilisation before I go in." He tries to keep his tone light, but the gravitas of the words outweigh the quality of his speech. He does not look at Sirius.

"I'm scared."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sirius _accio_ a glass from the cupboard. _Wandless and non-verbal to boot._

"Excellent work there, Padfoot," he says softly.

"Ten points to Gryffindor," returns Sirius, who pours him another glass of milk.

They toast, and drink their milk in silence for a while, sitting at the kitchen table, gazing at the moon.

"You'll come back."

"You don't know that."

"I know you, Moony, and you're a survivor."

"You're the one who survived Azkaban for 13 years."

"So?"

"So…" Remus realises that Sirius had a point. He sighs. "Look, I'm not really good company right now, so maybe we should just call it a night." He drains his glass a second time, cleans it, and sets it on the shelf, feeling satisfied that the milk has settled quite happily in his stomach this time around.

"Goodnight Padfoot." He turns to leave the kitchen.

"I wasn't scared."

Sirius' voice stops him.

"You were what?"

"I wasn't scared. When James asked me to be their secret-keeper." Turning back, he sees Sirius fiddling with his empty glass. "I thought it was great fun, I thought it would be cool to be their secret-keeper. I knew the risks, and I knew what was at stake, but still, it was fun then, and I wasn't scared." He raised his eyes to Remus.

"That's why you'll come back."

He banishes the glass into the sink. "And you're the only one I have left anymore, besides maybe Nym. You can't go softly into that night."

"It's 'gently into that night'," he corrects, smiling tremulously.

An airy wave of Sirius' hand. "Whatever, you know which one I mean, that Bob Dylan song. Now get thee to a beddery!"

Smiling, Remus doesn't bother to correct him.

-----  
**A/N:** Too many literary allusions? I make no apologies; you guys should be smart enough to know which are the quotes and which aren't right? (I'll provide the cheat sheet in my next update…)

**Shoutouts/Thank yous to:** Mouseykins, Pheo, Farther, Bardlover (woot!), MrsTater, Mute Mockingbird, EllaJ.W, islandtwofourths, give em enough rope (that's a seriously scary handle you've got there!), krumfan (I love your fics!), Possum132 and NaginiFay – your love is better than ice-cream.


	5. If Wishes Were Fishes

**Disclaimer:** These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.  
**Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Spoilers/Timeline: **Written after HPB was released. Starts immediately after GoF.  
**A/N: **Darth RealLife has stolen my mojo!

**Chapter 5: Wishes and Fishes **

Eyes – open.

Mouth – yawn.

Hair – pink. Always pink.

Welcome to the Tonks morning.

She rolls over in her bed, glad of the moderate lie-in time that she gets on her days off. She flops over on her side and palms off the alarm clock. Still staring at the second hand (shaped like a herring bone), she wishes she hadn't asked what she had, although she was glad to have cleared the air.

She wishes she had kept her mouth shut.

She wishes she wasn't so clumsy.

She wishes … she wishes… and wishes… for three more wishes. She smiles sleepily to herself, remembering sunlit days of days past when her mother would chide her for wishing.

_If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets_.

She's got the day off, and she promised to spend it with Sirius. _Probably chucking dung-bombs off the roof of the house,_ she smiles to herself.

She slides bonelessly off the bed and moves to wash up.

-----

"Bollocks! I think that guy saw us!"

"Nym, how can they see us? We're on top of a house under Fidelius."

"I don't know, but I distinctly saw him look up at us."

"Then he just sees blank air. Maybe he's admiring the nice weather we're having today."

"After his hat fell off!"

"You never know what pernicious event might make you stop and smell the roses."

Hiding behind the wall, back pressed against the red brick, she gives her cousin a twisted smile.

"I don't think that's roses he's smelling."

Sirius gestures to his stockpile of dungbombs. "He'd better not be, or I'm returning this lot to the twins and insisting on my money back."

She looks towards her own pile, marginally larger than Sirius's.

"Do you think it's safe to come out now?" she asks him. He shrugs, and slides against the wall upward. Peeking over the edge, he motions for her to stand up. "I don't see anyone around anymore. Come on!" Impatient, he grabs her wrist and drags her up.

"Ow! Sirius! That hurt!"

"Sorry." He takes his gaze off the street and rubs at her reddened wrist in guilt. "Are you alright? I really didn't mean it." He keeps rubbing her arm, but his eyes seem haunted somehow.

"Sirius?"

"Hmm…?" He turns his face towards her and his eyes refocus.

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes, I am. Let's chuck some more of these clods!" his mood as mercurial as ever, he moves towards his pile of dungbombs and starts throwing them off the roof, heedless as to whether he was hitting his target. _If he even HAD a target. You smell of some strange desperation today, my dear cuz. And I'm no Auror if I can't dig it out of you._

She palms a dungbomb, and watches as he throws another handful off in the direction of the small park that sits on the corner of Grimmauld Place and Maskrade Lane. She waits till he has finished savouring his throw, then proceeds to smash one right into his neck, letting it drip down his shirt.

"ARH! NYMPHADORA TONKS, YOU'RE DEAD MEAT!"

-----

Still chuckling half an hour later, they both troop downstairs after engaging in a fierce dungbomb war which sees them both brown-splattered and _extremely_ fragrant. Halfway down, she realises that there is only one bathroom, and quickens her step, hoping to get to it first.

No such luck.

Sirius cottons on to her plan, and they engage in a jostling match for the bathroom which Sirius won, on account of his larger frame. She sticks out her tongue at his gloating face as he closes the bathroom door, then half-skips her way to the kitchen, where she is promptly held at wandpoint by Remus, who has a scrunched-up face on.

"Stand still, please."

Sudden panic gives way to understanding, and she stands contritely as he casts no less than five _scourgifys_ on her body and clothes. She should have remembered that his nose would pick anything up. He must have been dying from her stink since she and Sirius came down from the roof. When she is more or less clean (and tingling so much from the static that she is almost afraid to touch anything), he stops and smiles at her.

"What's your favourite smell?"

Caught off-guard, she answers "cookies baking" before she can parse the reason behind why he's asking through her brain.

His smile turns into a rather impish grin.

"I meant, perfume."

"Oh! Uh… freesia and lily mixed together with violets." _What am I saying? I am such an idiot._

His eyebrows raise at the eclectic mix, but his wand waves a little, and he murmurs something under his breath.

_Adaugeo Perficio._

And suddenly she is swathed with a slight peach haze which smells heavenly. It dissipates quickly, and she is left smelling like… well, like freesia and lily mixed together with violets.

Her eyes widen in delight, and she turns to him with her mouth agape. He is already sitting down at the table, grinning into his tea as he pretends to read a two-day old Daily Prophet.

"I'm sorry about shocking you, but I had thought that Sirius would have let you use the bathroom first. Didn't mean to scare you with the wand."

"Teach me."

He looks up from his tea, still smiling, although the full-out grin has disappeared.

"I perfected a variation of that one for Lily as a Christmas present…I'm not sure if she would allow me to give it to another girl."

"It's an incredible piece of magic. Teach me."

He huffs a little with laughter, tells her the incantation, and shows her the wandcasting shape that she has to trace in the air. She tries it on a cup, but only manages to break it.

He shrugs. "Try it at home on a stuffed toy or something first. And try single-smells first, don't try the combinations until you're sure you can get single-smells right." He returns to the two-day old paper.

"Sorry about the stink. Forgot that the moon's near full."

His brows furrow slightly.

"What do you mean?"

She is puzzled. "Don't your senses get more acute as the moon waxes?"

His brows unfurrow, and understanding dawns. "Ah. They're always acute." A slight pause as he sips at his cup. "When did you know?"

She has turned her back to get a mug for tea. "Know what?"

"That I'm a werewolf."

"Oh. Moody told me. In the interests of full-disclosure and all that jazz."

"Ah."

There is a lull in the conversation as she sits and sips at the table. He is still reading the (two-day old!) newspaper, and she feels that she owes him something.

"I'm sorry about yesterday."

"Hmm?" He looks up from the newspaper, almost absent-mindedly. "Yesterday? What happened?"

"I asked about you and Sirius?"

"Ah." The grin emerges again from behind the mug of tea. "Don't worry about it, really." He returns to the paper.

Wondering why The Prophet was entrancing the Professor, she craned her neck and tried to read upside down. Nothing made sense to her, so she sneaked a couple of fingers underneath the pages which had fallen from his fingers, and pulled them towards her.

"It's in Welsh!" she said in dismay.

"Yes it is." He sounded amused.

"You read Welsh?"

"I AM Welsh. Or rather, I grew up in Wales. I think that should make me Welsh. I'm not too sure about ancestry, though."

She chews on that for a moment, and flips to the next page that she sneaked from him.

"Why are you reading two-day old Welsh Prophets? Don't they just translate what we have in England?"

"Research."

His voice has changed tenor, and he looks slightly tense at her question. _Aha. The plot thickens._

But just as she was flexing her Auror interrogation muscles, Sirius comes clomping cheerfully down the stairs, and squeaks a small, yellow, rubber duck in her face while exaggeratedly holding his nose.

"Nymphie, your turn to baff-baff now!" he squeaks in a high voice, and squeezes the rubber ducky. He grins like a madman, and puts the duck in front of her.

"And you'd better go soon, or Moony here will… hey! You smell good!" He sniffs at her, and turns an accusing gaze on Remus.

"Moony, did you use Lily's spell?"

"It's not hers; she got the one that smells like Lily of the Valley. This is the one that smells like that Egyptian essence, Queen Hatshepsut or something. That one with the muggle perfume."

"That's not the point! The point that it was hers!"

"Well, she still has hers, and this particular spell doesn't have Lily of the Valley."

"But…"

"Leave it alone, Sirius."

She is amazed that her irrepressible cousin shuts up, and turns to her instead.

"Hmm. I'd wager you got at least five scourgifies before that smell got off you. Phew! I was afraid I might smell like cowpats for weeks! But I still think you need to take a BAFF!" And with that last word, he squeezes the yellow duck madly in her face. Grabbing his hand and pushing the toy back into his face, she started thumb-wrestling him.

"Considering that you STOLE the bathroom from me, did you at least RUN the bath for me?"

"Only if you win."

There was a minute's worth of grunting before Remus was called in to declare the winner: one Nymphadora Tonks.

"Go run my bath, slave!"

Grumbling good-naturedly at bossy cousins who needed to be taken down a peg or two, Sirius clomped back up the stairs towards the bathroom.

"I don't think he's been as cheerful as this in a very long time. Thank you, Nymphadora."

Surprised and perplexed, she frowned.

"He's always cheerful."

Remus shook his head.

"Not always. Sometimes, he gets into these moods, and it's almost impossible to get him to cheer up."

"Well. I suppose it takes one to know one."

"I suppose. Thanks anyway."

"My pleasure. Who doesn't like acting six years old, anyway?"

Remus simply smiles, picks up the paper off the table, and starts reading again. This time, she sees a large Welsh headline, a picture of the Dark Mark, and a smaller picture of an animated wolf tearing at a chunk of meat.

She wonders what he thinks as he reads that piece of news.

-----

A/N II: Adaugeo Perficio just means "add perfume". The phrase probably doesn't exist in real Latin. Blame the translator. :) I also don't think any information about Lupin's origins have come from official sources yet, so I've made him Welsh because I've visited Cardiff before and I LOVED it. Queen Hatshepsut is really a perfume essence which is sold in Egypt. Diluted with ethanol or alcohol, it is also known more popularly as Pleasures, by Esteé Lauder.


	6. The Smell of Newsprint

**Disclaimer: **These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.  
**Rating: PG-13/T  
Spoilers/Timeline: **Written after _HPB_. Starts immediately after _GoF_.  
**A/N: **Do read and review. This is another one of my writing exercises, just to get myself in shape for a longer story with some semblance of an original plot. I'm just exploring Nyphadora's psyche; excuse me while I frolic in her pink world a while.

**Chapter 6: The Scent of Newsprint**

"What do you have there?"

Remus passes him the classifieds silently.

"Are you looking for a job? Now? What about your…" Sirius' voice trails off, and he looks at Remus expectantly. Remus just smiles enigmatically, and pours some more tea into his mug.

"I'm ON my mission. You're holding it."

Sirius looks confused, and coupled with his early morning bed-hair, looks remarkably close to the "deliciously scrummy" visage that Remus remembers the Hogwarts girls swooning over. He suppresses a wry grin, and bends over to snatch the classifieds away from Sirius.

"The classified section is my mission for the next few days."

"Oh, that explains a whole lot. The classified section, right, your mission. Which is what exactly? Becoming a copywriter for this... this…" Sirius waves the _Daily Prophet_ in Remus' face. "This utter, complete… piece of shite?"

"No, you idiot, I'm doing research into werewolf culture."

"Oh, again, that clears things up. Doing research into werewolf culture by reading the classified ads. Wow!"

"Padfoot, are you reaching your sarcasm quota for the day? Because you seem to be spending a lot of it on me now, and it's only ten in the morning. You sure you don't want to save some for later?"

"Oh, there's plenty more where that came from."

"Git."

"Moron."

As Sirius gets up to get his toast and tea, Remus wonders what is it about Sirius which makes him feel like a teenager again. He never behaves like this when he's with company – such as Arthur or Charlie or Bill, or – Merlin forbid! – Harry and Ron and Hermione. He turns and looks at Sirius with a faint smile playing about his lips, then bent his head and applied himself to the classified section again.

Greyback was smart, Remus thought. Smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for. Hiding messages in coded classified ads wasn't the most original of ideas in the muggle world, but in the wizarding world, it was practically Auror-worthy. Who would imagine that in the age of the owl post, to looks for messages which were hidden in plain sight?

"Now, Siriusly speaking," Sirius takes a moment to pose with his mug in a pseudo-heroic pose, then dropped it. "Seriously speaking mate, wotcher up to?"

"Wotcher?" Remus raises his eyebrows at his choice of expression. "You're spending too much time with Nymphadora."

"It's 'Tonks' before she hexes your balls off, and you're spending too much time avoiding my question." Sirius waggles his teaspoon in Remus' face. "Don't think I haven't caught on to how good you are at evading questions – remember second year? When we were bugging your nuts off about why you were sick all the time?"

Remus smiled at the memories. _It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… _the age of wisdom being poured between our ears, it was the age of our youthful foolishness. The epoch of belief for me, the epoch of incredulity that there were such friends in the world to be had. It was my season of the Darkness of lies, and later it dawned the season of Light in my life: friends. It was my winter of despair, and then came the Maurader spring of hope. _We had everything before us, we had nothing before us._

"Hello? Bloody hell, have you gone asleep there? Moony? Hello?"

Remus shakes himself out of his quick trot down memory lane, and sighs.

"You know, I hate it when you do that."

"Do what?"

"Just… drift away, like you're a cloud or something. Daffodils!"

"Okay, okay, I apologise. I managed to get some intelligence that Greyback was communicating the next mass transformation location each moon through the press. Assuming that he's smart enough – " Sirius snorts with derision at this, and Remus eyeballs him. "Assuming that he's smart enough, it has to be a paper which all werewolves would have access to, and are readily available in most of Great Britain, if not in all of UK."

Sirius sipped his tea and nodded sagely. "No wonder this house seems to be full of old papers all the time. I was starting to wonder if I should start lighting some of them on fire."

Remus ignores his comment, and continues. "England's _Prophet_ doesn't seem to have anything of note, and the only other paper with surprisingly high circulation is the Welsh edition."

"Why?"

"Seems like there's something about Wales that werewolves like," Remus said with a short bark of a laugh.

"Maybe it makes for good litter-box lining?"

Remus rolls his eyes, kicks Sirius' chair for good measure, and returns to the paper – but not before pulling out the crossword page and transfiguring a fork into a pencil (with attached eraser) for Sirius.

* * *

The next hour is quiet as Tonks takes an (extraordinarily long, Remus thought to himself in an odd moment) bath, Sirius grumbling under his breath as he attempts to finish the crossword puzzle, and while Remus runs through the Welsh papers.

As he pores through yet another page of classified ads (which have letter sizes so small Remus wonders how the ink doesn't all merge into one giant blob when it gets printed), something tickles his brain, and he knows that he's close to finding something. He's been seeing strange, undecipherable classifieds (more undecipherable than the average, at least), along with some which don't seem to be written in English or Welsh. The pages have been laid neatly aside, with Sirius' bare foot propped on the table as a makeshift paperweight.

"Done!" Sirius slams the crossword page and pencil on the table and crows his victory. Remus smiles and glances down at the page, nearly (almost instinctively) transfiguring the nearest pencil to a red one.

"Done done done! Done!" Sirius does a maniac jig in the middle of the kitchen as he makes another pot of tea. Remus laughs out loud at his awkward wriggles, and moves to set aside the crossword page when he notices something.

"Sirius, you just filled in nonsense words."

"So?"

_Well, there's certainly no arguing with logic like that_, Remus thinks as he arches his eyebrow and sets the paper aside on the "finished and nothing inside" pile of newspapers.

"Here, take a look and tell me if you can spot anything." Remus pushes the pile of newspapers towards Sirius. "I've circled them in red."

"How typical." Sirius' tone is droll, but he dutifully looks over them carefully as he sips from his mug. After five minutes, he shrugs. "Maybe they're in code. Pass me a paper and pencil, mate."

Ten minutes of frantic scribbling by Sirius, and Remus has finished looking through the rest of the papers. Deciding to take a break before he also got started on breaking the code, he looks over Sirius' shoulder as he pours himself a cup of tea.

All he sees on Sirius' papers are the alphabet, and their corresponding number in the alphabet.

"So A is 1 and B is 2, and so on, but what are you trying to prove?"

"Maybe the messages are numbers to call on those voice-floos that muggles have."

"Telephones."

"Yeah, tellytones, or fellytones, or whatever."

Remus has to admit that it is a bright idea, albeit far-fetched. Greyback would be living out in the woods, which doesn't offer much in the form of communicative services. Nonetheless, he picks up one of the papers with Sirius' scribbles to take a closer look.

"But the numbers are too many," he muses aloud.

A sudden pounding on the steps announces Tonks' arrival, and she flounces into the kitchen in dark blue PJs.

"I'm staying here tonight," she announces, and drops bonelessly into a chair. She grabs Sirius' mug of tea and takes a swig, then immediately makes a face.

"There's no sugar in this!" she accuses her cousin, who shrugs innocently.

"It's not your mug, cuz,"

She sticks out her tongue at the cup, and makes a gagging noise. "Yetch."

Remus pours a cup for her and shoves the sugar bowl towards her. Nodding her thanks towards Remus, she pulls the pile of suspect ads towards herself and looks at the first one he circled.

"Cool, backward secret messages! Are you writing to your lover in Wales, Remus?"

Two eyes swivel toward her and goggle.

Tonks looks up at the silence, then looks down on her shirt self-consciously.

"I didn't spill any on myself, did I?" She looks up at Remus in surprise. "Or do you really have a bird in Cardiff?"

* * *

A/N: Sorry about the huuuuge enormous humongous lag time. Uni term papers and exams. I would love to keep writing all day long, but life just gets in the way! Don't you just hate that happening?  Please review; it really, really, really helps to keep me motivated! 


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